WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden On Sunday, he called on people to “come together as one nation.” Assassination attempt Predecessor Donald TrumpThe president said he was ordering an independent security investigation into how such an attack could have happened.
Biden, who was briefed on the investigation in the Situation Room and then delivered a short speech from the White House in the afternoon, called for a “thorough and swift” investigation and urged the public to “not speculate” about the shooter’s motives or affiliations.
The President also told the U.S. Secret Service: Republican National Conventionbegins Monday in Milwaukee. Hours later, Secret Service convention coordinator Audrey Gibson Cicchino said the weekend raid on Trump hadn’t changed the agency’s convention security plans and that officials were “fully prepared.”
“An assassination attempt goes against every ideal we stand for as a nation,” Biden said in his speech.
“This is not like our country. This is not like America. And we cannot allow this to happen,” he said. “Unity is the hardest goal to achieve, but nothing is more important right now.”
Biden was scheduled to deliver a lengthy address to the nation from the Oval Office on Sunday evening.
Meanwhile, the president said he and first lady Jill Biden were praying for the family of former fire chief Corey Comperatore, who was shot and killed during a Trump rally on Saturday night. Butler, Pennsylvania.
“He was protecting his family from bullets,” Biden said. “God love him.”
The president also said he had a “brief but meaningful conversation” with Trump in the hours after the shooting, and said he was “profoundly grateful” that the former president was “in good health and recovering.”
Trump, who has called for the nation to recover since the shooting, posted to his social media accounts in response to Biden’s comments: “Let’s unite America!”
Achieving unity in reality will be much harder, especially in the midst of a fierce presidential campaign, as Biden’s team struggles to calibrate its course going forward in the wake of a weekend attack on the very man he is trying to defeat. November Elections.
Biden is Trump A serious threat to democracy Trump’s denial of the very principles on which the country was founded has led to a pause on such political messaging, at least in the short term. Shortly after Saturday night’s attack, Biden’s reelection campaign announced that it was “pausing all external communications and working to remove television advertising as soon as possible,” without specifying a time frame.
The president also postponed a trip planned for Monday to Texas, where he was scheduled to speak at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library about the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. Biden’s interview with NBC News host Lester Holt will take place at the White House instead of in Texas as originally scheduled.
But the White House said Biden would go ahead with a scheduled trip to Las Vegas, which will include a campaign stop on Wednesday. Kamala Harris Still, she postponed a campaign trip she had planned for Tuesday to Florida, where she was scheduled to meet with female Republican voters.
Trump, meanwhile, announced he would speed up his trip to Milwaukee and arrive at the Republican National Convention later on Sunday, during what is sure to be a fierce attack on Biden and the Democratic Party.
The weekend developments are The election campaign has been extraordinarily chaotic in recent weeks..
Biden’s Unstable debate performance On June 27, he so frightened his own party that some of its top supporters and donors turned against him. About 20 Democratic lawmakers Biden and his top advisers have called on the president to withdraw from the race altogether amid growing doubts about whether he is fit for a second term. Adding an event Across the country, people are becoming more vocal in their criticism of President Trump.
Saturday’s attack at least temporarily eclipsed a backlash on the eve of the Republican convention.
His campaign is hoping Sunday night’s speech will be an opportunity for Biden to further emphasize the need for unity, as well as to project leadership that will assuage uneasy criticism within his party.
“We will debate and we will disagree. That won’t change,” Biden said in an afternoon speech, “but we will never lose sight of who we are as Americans.”
While investigators are still in the early stages of determining what happened and why, some Biden critics have faulted the president for telling donors in a private call on Monday that “it’s time to attack Trump.”
The president was trying to argue that Trump had gotten away with a light public schedule after last month’s debate while he faced intense scrutiny, according to a person familiar with the comments, who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak more freely about private conversations.
“I have one job to do – defeat Donald Trump – and I believe I’m the best person to do that,” Biden said on a call with donors.
He continued, “So enough about the debate. Time to attack Trump. He’s had nothing to do for the last 10 days except ride around in a golf cart and brag about scores he didn’t get. Anyway, I’m not involved in his golf game.”
